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Free Agent: Bullet Run

GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and put in some hours to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week, he shoots and taunts his opponents for fame in SOE's new FPS, Bullet Run.

The long-in-beta first-person shooter formerly known as Hedone is now live on Steam as Bullet Run, and while the new moniker is a huge improvement, it still features a business model that gives "free" a bad name. Bullet Run is better labeled "free-to-try," because paying customers absolutely get distinct advantages over the unwashed free masses. It's a shame, too, because Sony Online Entertainment's shooter-as-game-show features tight gunplay mechanics and some fun features.

No Money Down

Set in a near-future where synthetic humans battle to the death with guns and gadgets on live television, Bullet Run begins with a barebones character creation menu. I say barebones because, despite the ridiculous number of customization options that exist, free players start with only the ability to alter sex, hair color, and pants, T-shirt, and boot color. As a result, 90% of starting free players look like Uncharted hero Nathan Drake or Nathan Drake with a dye job. So much so that a number of players I saw online have named their avatars some version of NathanDrak3.

You too can be Nathan Drake with an MP5.

While customization is a huge part of Bullet Run, you can't really do any of it when starting out as a free player because that Kardashian's closet worth of clothing must be purchased with time-earned Bullet Points or real-world money -- and it's all ridiculously expensive.

It's a strange decision by designer Acony Games, because one of the marketing bullet points for Bullet Run is its "Character Stylization" system that boasts hundreds of different hats, hairstyles, outfits, elbow pads, facial hair, you name it. It wouldn't be so bad if those were purely cosmetic, but in Bullet Run style has a function. You level up though a "Fame" system -- the more people you kill and then taunt with a quick press of the Q button, the more fans and fame you gain and the faster you level up. Fans love when you wear a ridiculous Viking helmet and flame-painted leather suit, rewarding you with a higher percentage of fame for every kill and taunt. So while customization is a huge part of Bullet Run, you just can't really do any of it when starting out as a free player because that Kardashian's closet worth of clothing must be purchased with time-earned Bullet Points or real-world money -- and it's all ridiculously expensive.

Determined to keep an iron grip on my pennies, I entered my first match with the standard-issue MP5 submachine gun and proceeded to blast my Uncharted doppelgangers in fast-paced, 12v12 team battles, complete with color commentary. Kill or be killed and two cheeky announcers will put in their two cents; a nice touch for the first few minutes until phrases start repeating and steadily getting more annoying from there. "He didn't see that one coming!" and "Nothing more than a speed bump!" seem to be the only words in the commentators' limited vocabulary.

Once you're in a match with all your Nathan Drake clones, it's actually pretty fun.

Coming from SOE, a publisher who has repeatedly bashed other F2P games for being pay-to-win while promising it will set the new free standard with PlanetSide 2, Bullet Run's weapon-repair scheme is inexplicable and hypocritical.

Still, the tight shooting mechanics, varied, well-designed maps featuring a nice mix of multi-level open and close quarters settings, and smooth, responsive controls delivered that "just one more match" FPS fix I love. In spite of its brazen pay-to-win attitude, I had fun blasting and taunting my way to celebrity status. That is, until even my once-trusty MP5 started to crap out on me. That's right: Bullet Run's weapons degrade over time, and repairs cost me a huge chunk of the precious Bullet Points I'd earned through hours of play. So instead of being flush with points (SOE throws in 10,000 BPs to new players) to spend in the marketplace on Fame-generating customization items or new guns, I was forced to shell out more than 2,000 Bullet Points (my haul from roughly three hours of playtime) just to fix my bare-minimum weapon. Considering it costs 4,700 points just for a new haircut and tens of thousands for new weapons (the M4 assault rifle I had my eye on costs an outrageous 35,200 BPs), the repair bill was a huge blow.

Investing time simply isn't enough, and Bullet Run is more than happy to take money to quickly remedy that problem. In the history of poor free-to-play business model decisions, this has got to be among the very worst. Coming from SOE, a publisher who has repeatedly bashed other F2P games for being pay-to-win while promising it will set the new free standard with PlanetSide 2, Bullet Run's weapon-repair scheme is inexplicable and hypocritical.

Insert Coin

Plunk down a credit card, deduct $15 from your account, and you are officially a Platinum Bullet Run player… for a month. Yes, even when you do pay SOE for its free game, it's all just a rental. That Platinum membership will give you some game-changing perks, though: 500 Station Cash, a 50% Bullet Points boost, reduced weapon condition loss, no level requirements for items in the marketplace, and a 10% discount on all of those goodies.

Let me get this straight, you want me to pay nearly $10 or spend countless hours earning 35,000 credits for an M4?

You can kiss all of those perks goodbye after 30 days, however, unless you want to continue paying the monthly sub. Quite frankly, Bullet Run simply isn't worth it. Not when there is a growing list of equal or better free shooter options out there, including Team Fortress 2, Tribes: Ascend (which gives you a permanent XP boost with any purchase), Blacklight: Retribution, Super Monday Night Combat, and Ghost Recon Online, to name a few.

Free or Flee?
The problem with Bullet Run is you'll never get to fully enjoy the customization and showboating features that make it unique unless you're willing to pay. If it were simply a matter of paying a one-time $15 fee to remove the ridiculous weapon repair penalties and boost your Fame gain by 50%, I might actually recommend it. Bullet Run would actually be a very good $15 shooter. Instead, it's falsely labeled as free when it's really a poorly disguised subscription FPS. Flee.

Spy Guy says: So that's where Hedone went, eh? Never did understand a shooter with a name linked to sensual pleasure. Here's to hoping SOE quickly learns from its F2P missteps and, as promised, delivers PlanetSide 2 without a pay-to-win or free-to-try business model.